The science of Breaking Bad: Blood Money

Breaking Bad | Season 5 | Episode 9 | “Blood Money”

Walt surveys his life that was.

After an agonising wait, Breaking Bad returned to our screens last weekend to wrap up season five and remind us why we started watching it in the first place. As Hank pieces together the true picture behind the Heisenberg meth empire and Walt brazenly confronts him about it, Jesse starts to break down over the things he’s been party to.

It’s been a long almost-year since we last saw a new episode of Breaking Bad, and several months since I last updated this blog (partly due to Fringe moving more into pure sci-fi territory). Increasing work and family commitments have left me with relatively little writing time, and when this season wraps up I will be taking a thorough look at what I want to do with this project (suggestions welcome). Broad options will be to leave it as an archive and cease updating, find other science/television/film things to write about, or start writing about something else.

Gale’s case number is 10-5450192. No significance comes to mind.

Here’s Gale and Walt’s key innovation in methamphetamine manufacture, as seen when Hank compares the handwriting to that in Leaves of Grass.

Reductive amination – the reaction on the front page of Gale’s lab book.